


Purgatory Oneshots

by cirque_de_reves (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester in Purgatory, Destiel - Freeform, M/M, Purgatory, destiel one-shots, purgatory oneshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-09-27 09:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9999911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cirque_de_reves
Summary: gaps in the purgatory canon that i have taken the liberty of filling myself   !





	1. Deprivation

**Author's Note:**

> these are oneshots set in purgatory, which is one of my favorite settings for fics. i figured i'd write some and make myself happy :-)  
> also, a lot of these are supported by the theory that cas and dean are already a thing while they're down there, just out of the sheer need for a shoulder to cry on and emotional support and all that. so instead of admitting their everlasting love for each other, our favorite angel and his hunter are merely going to participate in some subtle couple's drama. even if in their case, this involves saving each other from getting ripped to shreds by all kinds of monstrous entities straight outta god's armpit, which i understand is not something most healthy couples do very often. anyway, i think it's cute how much they need each other, especially while they're in purgatory, so i decided to put those feelings to some use. thanks :-)

Dean yawns.

It's not that he's bored; how could he be bored with so much to do, so much to look at, so much to kill?

He yawns because he is tired. Exhausted, even. Absolutely fucking _debilitated_.

The sensation grapples onto the part of his brain connected to his spine, dragging it down along the ridges of cartilage and leaving it to stew among his stomach acids, pink wrinkles unraveling into a venomous snake that crawls right back up his throat and forces him to gag, vomit sickening his taste buds. Thank God, though, because the feeling hardly lasts - thank Castiel, actually, who reaches out with two gentle fingers towards his forehead, and as the pads of his fingertips brush Dean's temple the hunter immediately feels restored, like there are suddenly twelve or more hours of sleep in his body. His eyelids flutter, but he opens them wide, because they don't feel like they weigh ten tons anymore. Cas is right in front of him, the distance between their faces measuring no more than a few inches. Now that his eyeballs aren't trembling in his head and his eyesight isn't fragmented and fuzzy, he can see every bead of sweat on the angel, every follicle of dark stubble lining his jaw.

The first time this happened, within their first two or three days together in the hellhole, Dean was reluctant to let him do it; because Cas using his grace at all just meant he was even more of a fucking _beacon._ But nowadays he doesn't even have the time to reject him, because every time Cas notices him struggling he just does that two-fingered thing - Dean can't even see it coming, most times, he's so enervated - and then he is cured.

He can't say he's not grateful, but what's the use of wakefulness if it's just gonna get him killed?

He supposes he'd rather die fighting than with his eyes closed, though.

"You can't sleep here." Cas looks at him through thick black lashes and pure blue eyes, his head hanging in solemnity. Dean wants to ask if he means _here_ , like where they're standing in the tiny clearing, or _here_ like Purgatory in general; but he knows the answer, so he keeps his mouth shut.

"It's too dangerous." Cas adds, and Dean can't help thinking that whatever they do, it's always going to be dangerous. Down here, swamped in God's _piss_ , there will always be things to do, things to look at, things to kill.

Dean wishes he could ignore it all, and steal a kiss.

He grips his makeshift machete harder, and nods and steps away towards the woods. Towards the battle, towards the danger, towards fangs and claws and blood. 

Away from thick black lashes and pure blue eyes.


	2. Almost...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this fucked me up, and i wrote it. smh

Dean knew, always, that one of these days he was gonna get hurt _bad_. It's happened before, and it happens again now. He knew he was either gonna make it out or die trying.

Never did he anticipate, however, that it would happen here in Purgatory, where he feels like he can do anything, where he feels like he's a king.

And what does that make him?

He wonders that often; what it means to be so bloodthirsty that he _enjoys_ being caught between worlds, surrounded by monsters, chopping his way to the neon exit sign.

Which he still isn't sure exists, or if it did if it would permit him to carry his seraph and the vampire through with him.

He tries not to think about it, though, because for now it doesn't matter - what matters is that Cas is standing in front of him, his back to Dean, his right arm brandishing the homemade weapon that's gotten them both this far. He's spotting Dean, acting as a literal guardian angel, protecting him from the fan of threats that throw themselves into him again and again.

The hunter himself lies propped against a scraggly oak tree, pus and blood pouring from his wounds, oxygen seeping from his lungs in what will probably be his last breath, soon.

For a few quivering moments, he wonders what will happen to Cas when he is gone. Whether he will make it out, or die, or if Benny'll kill him, or if Dean's companionship is vital enough to him that he wouldn't be able to live without it.

Surely this must be true, because while his organs threaten to spill out of him Cas is there, fighting off a deadly half-circle of Leviathan and werewolves and more as they wave their dirty talons and sharpened teeth towards the fresh meat Dean has become.

He holds what little breath he has as Cas kills them off, one by one; he's never seen the angel so determined.

As the mob lessens and eventually throbs to a dead and dying halt, Dean watches Cas's giant wings unfurl in cruel victory. They are fierce and fatal and composed of shadow, but Dean can still see the silhouettes of hundreds of thousands of steely black feathers, hauntingly still in the tepid air.

Then they are gone, and Cas is by his side, a friendly face in a trench coat again.

Dean's eyes close as he waits for the trademarked healing to wash over him and leave him clean and unscathed, but it doesn't come. At least, not for a few minutes. Seeming to forget the urgency, Cas can only wrap his hands around the man's neck and rock the two of them back and forth, pressing kisses to the top of Dean's head and weeping into his hair, saying things that are either unintelligible because Dean is incapacitated, or because Cas is.

In Cas's pocket Dean can feel the smooth metallic butt of the angel blade pressing into his sternum, and heaving his chest up he manages to croak out, "Cas."

The angel clenches his fist in the ruptured plaid fabric adorning the hunter's shoulder, and makes a small, undefinable sound. "Dean, I - I almost lost you -"

Weakly, Dean grasps his hand and brings it to his face, clinging it to his head. Cas understands, and sends a tremor of heavenly power throughout the man's body, erasing his injuries, leaving nothing behind but the solid ache of fearful relief that racks them both.

Awash in recovery, Dean loosens his grip on Cas's wrist, but doesn't let go. Instead, he brings the seraph's fingers down to his mouth and delicately places his lips against them, squinting his eyelids together as tightly as he possibly can. He holds the two of them together like that, even though he can already picture another truckload of creatures approaching them through the sparse grey-green light that filters through the atrophying canopy of leaves above them and onto the hopeless horizon.

"Almost," he says, wiping the tears from Cas's cheeks with the back of his other hand, preparing to get back on his feet. "Almost."


	3. In the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is my little take on what happened when they first got there. it goes fast, and it doesn't follow canon, like, at all. oh well. whatever.

At first, Dean can only whisper the angel’s name, can only afford to let it roll from his tongue and into the oddly frigid air as quietly as his panicked vocal chords can muster.

He’s had enough of this when he realizes that Cas can’t be within two yards or so of him, because otherwise he would’ve responded (he _would’ve_ ) so Dean lets whatever’s in the darkness hear his needy and now unsuppressed whimpers. He lets whatever’s making the noises – the hisses and the scratching and the screams – see him through the tangibly eerie forest with its – or _their_ , implying that there could be much more evil here than he’s even read about – gory, thirsty eyes, as he reduces himself to a pleading mess on his knees in the crumbling mulch beneath him. He begins to yell, to cry out and beg for the angel to come back, to not leave him alone with the shadows and the imminent cacophony and the towering, shriveled tendrils of sour plant growth.

For a long time, he kneels like that. Long after there’s no energy left in him, to roar again into the void. He is sure he’s been sucked into a black hole, into some extraterrestrial dimension where monsters exist as humans do on earth: the vast majority. A ratio of one, a measly and admittedly pathetic human, to all.

 He’s sure that it’s all over, that he’s never getting out (the angel, when he left, had taken Dean’s hope with him), but then he sees the first shining rays of dusty-rose-dawn shining through the trees. The clarity of it reveals terrible things, like blood-trails and foreign footprints, but it’s better than not knowing what’s out there. He follows a scattering of brittle auburn leaves, and when he reaches the end of it he raises his eyes and they are swirling around a humanoid figure.

Cas.

Dean’s eyes well up again, but this time it’s in fury.

“Have you been here the whole time?” He asks, huskily, his throat tightening and folding in on itself like a telescope. He crosses his arms across his chest, hugging his sides until he can feel his biceps like they’re about to pop.

Cas looks down, and as mad as Dean is at him, he can’t stay that way for very long.

_Look at him, with his doe-eyes and his crimson lips, and look at the way he looks at you with them, both features swaying wide open, like he’s waiting for you to swoop in and take them as your own._

He is mad at _himself_ , for sobbing into the abyss like a fucking _girl_.

“No,” he finally responds, after staring at Dean unblinkingly for what felt like hours. “But I heard you. I _heard_ you…the whole time.”

Dean clenches his fists and immediately relaxes them, choosing not to be angry at how many times Cas has put this same strain of abandonment on their relationship. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, which is why Dean figures they’re probably somewhere in the belly of it.

“Why?”

“I can see them all, Dean. The monsters. I know when they’re coming…” He pauses, and picks up again along a different train of thought. “I could tell that they were somewhat – attracted – to me, more so than to you, and I got scared, but it wasn’t selfish, I swear…”

Dean sighs a little in relief and runs a hand through his hair. The impending desperation of whether or not they’re surrounded is frightening, but not as much as Cas’s words are comforting. Dean needs someone he can rely on to stay with him, but at least Cas’s heart is in the right place.

He puts on a no-nonsense face and wrings his fingers around the angel’s sleeve. It means _thank you_ , and the seraph responds by grabbing hold of his collar and smashing their lips together. It’s the last chance they’ll get to do this for quite a while, so Dean doesn’t fight it. For the brusque moment that it lasts, he welcomes the kiss, pulling Cas deeper into him until neither of them have any chance of catching their breath.

When they do, they simply look at each other; and lord knows that communicates more than gawky words ever could.

_Look at him, with his swollen pupils and his bloated lips, and look at the way he looks at you with them, like he’d give anything to keep you alive. Like he couldn’t bear to lose you._


	4. in which dean taps benny on the shoulder, and asks him how long it's been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (...in which cas is gone, and dean prays to him always)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the first I've written in a while! gotta keep that destiel muscle pulsing, or it's gonna atrophy. lord knows what I'd do if I couldn't write destiel. probably become a sedentary couch vegetable...oh wait
> 
> (this has some benny/dean in it. it doesn't prevail though, and it's kind of sad, so all y'all denny shippers, don't say I didn't warn you)

He taps Benny on the shoulder, and asks how long it's been.

When he's got his answer (it's not a likable one, and he doesn't want to remember it), he taps into the part of him that resorts to litany, and prays to the blue-eyed angel that left him behind.

_C'mon, man, I need you here._

The words become familiar to him as the Purgatory days become longer, and even with Benny by his side he is stupefied by objective lonesomeness, the stuff of big cities and suicide letters. He feels it in him solidly, like tree bark being shoved up behind his ribs, and it makes him miss his whiskey. It's worse when he brings under contemplation the fact that he's hopeless, and that the angel must be lying in an odorous, blood-rusty ditch by now. He must be, goes the repetitive thought process, the one Dean cycles through at regular intervals now. He must be, because if he's not, then he would have said or done something by now to confirm it. (And the benefit-of-the-doubt half of Dean's weary brain replies that he might be in a compromising situation, and he might be incapable of doing anything of the sort, but Dean has long since learned not to give people the benefit of the doubt.) 

What's worse? For Cas to be alive and not with Dean? Or to be dead?

It's a tough question, and to answer it establishes either Dean's selflessness or selfishness. Both sides of his brain opt out.

It's not good that he's starting to argue with himself again. When he was younger - not a kid, but still a boy - sometimes it'd get especially bad and he'd yell things entirely out of context during lanky silences in the Impala, and John would extend his arm from the ancient steering wheel and strike him across the face with it, grumbling about how  _they'll getcha if you keep that up, son,_ and Sam would stir in his puberty-prolonged sleep as the silence continued on resolutely, as if no one had ever interrupted it in the first place.

_Dad was right._

He says it to Cas more than he says it to himself; these days he doesn't even bother saying  _Amen_ ; the prayers are continuous at this point. They last for hours, and the hours turn weeks, and the weeks turn into more weeks, and the more-weeks all mash together like swampy potpourri. Dean consistently finds himself forgetting how many of them there have been. He asks Benny sometimes twice in one day.

The two of them talk a lot, but it's not like Dean could listen if he tried, and their conversations aren't nearly as long as the one-sided ones Dean has with Cas in his head. Benny even kisses him once, stops in the middle of a ranting soliloquy to press open lips onto Dean's. Dean lets him do it, doesn't even close his eyes. He slackens his jaw and dissociates as the vampire moves against him, and he barely registers that it's happening.

"Jesus," Benny says. He pulls back and bites his hollow cheek until the points of his fangs drive him to bleed. His pupils are dry, judgmental slits in his head, and his palms are stiff at his sides and his skin crackles and pops like he's mummified. He looks like the creature he's supposed to be, with his jaundice-yellow flesh and narrow posture. Dean thinks this calmly. Not only is his mind a stagnant ocean, but all the fish are gone.  

"It's like kissing a damn mirror." Benny finishes, and turns away. Dean shrugs wordlessly and robotically and pushes himself back into a lightfooted battle stance. He can feel the lonesomeness consuming him, becoming him, the way a tumor would. He is made of lonesomeness. 

_Please, Cas. I can't take it much longer. I've seen so many of hell's sunrises that they aren't a delicacy anymore. I've seen everything that could've been good leave along with the last traces of you. I've seen everything now, but I haven't seen you, and they cancel each other out._ _You're_ _everything, but you're not here, and I'm nothing._

Eventually he will be naught but an ache, Dean thinks outside of the prayers. A pinpoint on the loosely knit horizon of space-time, a static black gap in the continuum. A grand metamorphization of lost humanity.

 _The righteous man. Damn, Cas, I can't be fucking righteous if you're not my fucking man._  

He taps Benny on the shoulder, and asks how long it's been. 

 


End file.
